


Halogen

by JupiterMelichios



Series: Tumblr Fics [24]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Batman: A Death in the Family, Challenge Response, Dark, Ficlet, Jason Todd Lives, Jason Todd is Blue Jay, JayTim Week, Lazarus Pit, M/M, Mentioned Ra's al Ghul, POV Jason Todd, Past Character Death, Robin reversal, Tim Drake is Red Hood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:40:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24492919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JupiterMelichios/pseuds/JupiterMelichios
Summary: Tim had never really loosened up, no matter how many times Dick or Jay tried to teach him, he always moved like he thought he was going to be graded on it. It took serious pain or exhaustion to get him to really randomise how he moved and fought. He was good enough that most of the Robin-tier villains never noticed it, but even only three years older Jay could predict his next move 90% of the time, and Dick might as well have been a mindreader for how well he could read him.The boy Jason’s fighting is unreadable.
Relationships: Tim Drake/Jason Todd
Series: Tumblr Fics [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/136539
Comments: 12
Kudos: 147
Collections: JayTimWeek





	Halogen

**Author's Note:**

> For JayTim Week day 3 - Role/Robin Reversal

The figure in the alley looks familiar, until he moves.

Tim had never really loosened up, no matter how many times Dick or Jay tried to teach him, he always moved like he thought he was going to be graded on it. It took serious pain or exhaustion to get him to really randomise how he moved and fought. He was good enough that most of the Robin-tier villains never noticed it, but even only three years older Jay could predict his next move 90% of the time, and Dick might as well have been a mindreader for how well he could read him.

Not that the kid hadn’t been good, he’d been damn good. If he’d survived more than two years in the cape he might have been one of the best. But he never got the chance to grow past the self-consciousness that made him easy to predict.

The boy Jason’s fighting is unreadable.

Most of the league of assassins fighters Jason’s come up against have this distinctive fluidity to their movements, the result of a lifetime of drills more intense than anything even Bruce would dare inflict on a kid.

This kid, the one who looks so much like Tim, moves like a weasel, moments of intense stillness and then sudden bursts of movement, like watching a fight filmed on one of those old timey cameras that only captures a couple of frames a minute.

If he wasn’t so focused on staying alive, he’d admire the aesthetic of it, the black hoodie clinging to the body armor underneath, the way every unpredictable attack sends up a spray of rain water, glistening yellow in the sickly halogen light of a flickering streetlamp at the end of the alley, the way the half light turns sharp cheek bones and pointed features into something almost inhuman. The way Jason can only see his eyes when the light catches them, making them gleam.

Jason’s absolutely certain that he’s being played, that his opponent is ten steps ahead of him and just waiting for Jason to catch up. So far the kid’s only using a knife, but he’s got a pistol on his hip and another in a shoulder holster, and Jason’s about 90% sure he’s going to die.

There’s no way this can be Tim. They don’t move alike, and Tim would never have hurt Jason in a million years. And yet…

“Robin?” He ducks under a slash of the knife, takes a knee to the gut for his trouble. He can barely draw a breath, but he has to know, if he’s going to die here he has to at least _know_ _._ “ _Tim?_ ”

“Are you hoping I say yes or no?” the boy asks, jerking to a sudden stop just out of Jay’s reach and raising one eyebrow curiously. Tim hadn’t had that mannerism. Ra’s does though. “Which is worse do you think? That your brother is still dead, or that he’s about to kill you?”

“Dead,” Jason says at once. “God, how could that even be a _question_?!”

“You’re going to loose this fight.”

“You think I don’t know that?! Tell me your **name**.”

“You know my name.”

“ ** _Fuck_**. Fuck fuck fuck, is it really… Are you really…?” He wants to believe, he wants so badly to believe that there’s been some kind of miracle, or that this is one of Ra’s plots, anything that means that this is real and Tim’s come back to them, even if that means he’s a bad guy now, but Jason’s not actually stupid. There are a dozen explanations more plausible than resurrection, and all of them are bad. “Prove it. Tell me something only Tim would know.”

That gets him a smile like a knife blade, and Tim had never smiled like that, Tim had been so shy he barely smiled at all, and yet… “Please. Prove that you’re him.”

“You thought you were alone in the cave. At least to begin with. You’d forgotten I was there, or maybe you didn’t know at all."

The smile widens. “You sat in the big chair by the computer. You were seventeen, but you still looked small in that chair. You didn’t undress, you just undid your fly. You weren’t wearing a cup. I remember… I remember noting that, as though it was going to be useful.”

“It was my day off,” Jason says, voice strained. “I wasn’t going out. I thought I was alone.”

“You closed your eyes. I didn’t know what to do, but I didn’t have a choice anyway. I couldn’t look away.”

“Couldn’t keep quiet, either,” Jason says. Distantly, like it’s a dream, he’s aware that his hands are shaking. He clenches them tight, lets the feeling of his brass knuckles - the ones Bruce still doesn’t approve of even though Jason’s proved a dozen times over that knows how to use them without stepping over any lines - digging into his palms ground him. He’s here. This is, somehow, real. _Tim_ is real.

“You saw me watching,” Tim says, and there’s something that might be amusement in his voice, something that might be regret. “You watched me watching you.”

Big scared eyes, a blush like a tomato, his little brother watching him jack himself off, that prissy little mouth open on a gasp that had felt like a yell in the quiet of the cave. Jason’s heart pounding in his throat with the fear of being caught, his balls drawing tight for the thrill of being caught, his hand moving tight and fast on his cock because a part of him wanted Tim to _see_. Wanted those eyes that had watched his first night as Robin and his last, and his first as Bluejay to see this about him as well.

Wanted Robin to see Bluejay this way. Wanted Tim to see Jason this way.

He’d come so hard his vision blacked out, and by the time he’d blinked himself back to something like consciousness he’d been alone.

“We never talked about it.”

A shrug, or… no, a shifting of the knife, right hand to left, disguised as a shrug. “What was there to say?”

“I don’t know. I still wish I’d said something. I’ve… I’ve thought about it a lot. About the things I never got to say to you.”

Tim makes a sharp gesture with the knife, and Jason flinches back even though they’re still too far apart for Tim to cut him. “Meaningless.”

“Not to me. You were… God, Tim, you were my brother, my little brother, and you died! I… Bruce wouldn’t let me hold you. He wouldn’t let anyone hold you. It took Alfred to get him to let go of you so we could get you ready for the undertakers.” He can’t hold back the sob. “I had to change you, get you into civilian clothes, and you were… you were so **cold** . And you... “ Angrily he wipes the tears away with the back of his hand. “Don’t tell me that was meaningless, don’t you fucking _dare_! You are my **brother**!”

“Am I?” Tim takes a step forward, hands splayed to show that the knife has disappeared back into his clothes at some point when Jason wasn’t looking. “Am I really? Is that why you want me? Is that why you came so hard when you realised I was watching?” Another step, and he’s close enough that he can grab Jason’s chin, hold his head still, force him to see. Tim’s exactly as short as Jason had always known he would be at eighteen, but in that moment he feels huge, feels powerful and inescapable, like Bruce at his Bruce-est. “Does Bruce know what a pervert you are, Jason?”

He leans in, so the words brush against Jason’s lips like a kiss. “Does he know you get hard for your baby brother?”

Jason knows it’s stupid, but he also knows that he’s not equipped physically or mentally to fight this new terrifying version of Tim, the one who has Ra’s’s fingerprints all over him, so what does it even matter?

He kisses Tim.

For a moment, Tim’s totally still, not even breathing, and then all at once he moves, kissing Jason back hard and insistent and nothing like Jason had expected. Nothing like he had, in the dark shameful small hours of the morning, imagined.

He pulls Tim close to him, doesn’t feel Tim pull the knife from wherever he’d hidden it. All the same, he knows. When Tim pulls back, looks deep into Jason’s eyes, he knows.

“Tell Bruce I’ll see him soon,” Tim says, quiet and certain, and Jason’s last coherent thought is relief that he’s apparently going to survive this, before Tim strikes, slashing Jason’s throat without any change in his expression. Like this is just another job.

Jason presses a hand to his neck, pressing as hard as he can manage with his hands shaking and his vision blurring.

Tim just watches, expressionless, his face and hands dripping red, Jason’s blood soaking into his hoodie along with the rain, as Jason’s legs give out and he falls hard, scrabbling to keep pressure and to catch himself and not managing either.

They stare at each other, and then Tim just turns, and walks away, leaving Jason collapsed on the floor, watching as his blood mingles with the rain water, watches the way the flickering halogen light turns it black as ebony, until his vision goes grey, and then black, as he finally passes out.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love


End file.
